Marie Myrick, 60, weighed 84 pounds in January last year, the result of heroin addiction that started in her 30s.

“I looked like I was going to die,” she told me Thursday of the drug that once made her feel like “nothing hurts. When you inject that, life seems so beautiful.”

Now she weighs 170 pounds, and is OK with that weight, though she is starting to push food away.

“I became comfortable,” said Myrick, who hasn’t used drugs since a few months before she started living at Shirley’s Place in Rockford 18 months ago.

It’s a halfway house for women who have been in jail or prison, are recovering from drugs or alcohol and were homeless, or close to, not having a consistent roof over their heads.

In the next several months, though, Myrick will have to move out of her one-bedroom apartment in the 20-apartment complex at 3201 Gilbert Ave.

The maximum length of stay is two years.

“They’ll have to carry me out kicking and screaming,” said Myrick, who is the oldest woman of 12 now in the program, many of whose children live with them in two-bedroom apartments.

Shirley’s Place in July hired a full-time caseworker, after budget cuts had trimmed that spot, and more women are expected to move in soon.

The place could be filled tomorrow, said Samantha Coffill, program director of the Women’s Restorative Justice Program that operates Shirley’s Place through The Salvation Army. But those chosen “have to really want to change” and “have to be a good fit” with the other women at Shirley’s Place, she said. The racial/ethnic makeup of the women in the program: 60 percent white, 20 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic.

Shirley’s Place opened in 2006 in a building where drug sales had taken place over the years. It was named after Shirley Bartholomew, who had used drugs and had been incarcerated and wanted women to have a safe place to live while reintegrating into society.

Myrick’s apartment was furnished with contributions from groups like Grace United Methodist Church and Salvation Army thrift stores. Rockford Woman’s Club provides the women with toiletries, towels and clothing. Myrick will get to take it all with her when she leaves.

The source of her comfort not only is her near-spotless apartment, it’s also the support she gets at Shirley’s House.

She receives free bus passes to get where she needs to go. And her life is structured. Each resident must complete 30 hours of constructive activity each week, including substance abuse treatment, employment, school or volunteer service.

They have a 9 p.m. curfew and limited pre-approved visitors in the “recovery” phase of the program. They must submit to routine drug tests. If any resident brings drugs or alcohol onto the property, they are out of the program, and that has happened a few times the past few years, Coffill said.

Page 2 of 2 - The second phase helps them maintain employment. Myrick helps clean and decorate at Shirley’s Place. Residents also must pay 35 percent of their net pay for monthly program fees and open a savings account, and they get a later curfew and more visiting privileges. The last phase is transitions the resident to independent living.

Coffill said the Women’s Restorative Justice Program checks up on the women after they’ve graduated from the program. Program staff check jail records and keep in touch informally to offer more resources. Once in a while, a woman has been readmitted to Shirley’s Place, she said. But most have been doing comparatively well living independently.

Myrick wants to make a clean break.

“I don’t want to be the person I used to be,” she told me.

She blames the start of her drug abuse partly on feelings of abandonment. She said her mother chose to stay with a boyfriend who’d hurt her mother, rather than leave with Myrick when she was 17 years old.

At one time, Myrick, who moved to Rockford in 1988 and worked at a call center, didn’t shower for days on end and didn’t come out of her house for weeks.

“The only person who would see me would be my dope man,” she said.

She was in and out of inpatient and outpatient programs through Rosecrance. She drove on a suspended license and was in and out of the Winnebago County Jail for drug offenses.

Myrick recently started receiving her late husband’s Social Security benefits, so that will help with her housing and other living costs when she’s out on her own.

“They have taught me so much,” Myrick said of Shirley’s Place. “Now I need to start a new life.”

Godspeed.

Georgette Braun: 815-987-1331; gbraun@rrstar.com; @georgettebraun

For more information

Though the Winnebago County Jail and groups such as Rosecrance, Remedies and Rockford Rescue Mission refer women to the Shirley’s Place program, individuals can also make inquiries.

For more information or to donate, call 815-713-3179 or email Samantha_Coffill@usc.salvationarmy.org.